The Meeting at Waitahuna.

Otago Witness, Issue 2373, 24 August 1899, Page 44

The Meeting at Waitahuna.

TO^HE EDITOR.

Sir, — Your Waitahuna- correspondent in your lost issue refers to the meeting addressed hers by Mrs Lee, and in regard to hte second resolution put by me tc the meeting writes in a way that is, I think, apt to be misleading. It is true the resolution xc Magistrate Stratford's decision was not very promptly moved and aeoonded, but the same thing was true of th« prior one dealing with " The Scrutineers' Bill, and is also true of any resolution pnt at a meeting of that description when, as in this case, no prearrangement is made to provide a mover and seconder. Natural modesty inclines people to hesitate, waiting to see whether or not someone else will take the initiative. In this oase I judge that such was the cause of the hesitation, and not any disagreement from or opposition to the subject matter of the motion. That such is true was clearly shown by the voting. After having called for a phow of hands in favour of the motion, I made a special request to all dissenting from it to signify their dissent, giving as reason for so doing that I intended forwarding the resolution to Mr Allen, our member, and wished to be able to state to him definitely how many dissentients there actually were in a meeting that was full to the doors. There were, Sir, only two — Mr Barnett and Hr G. Ryan. The resolution, therefore, was unanimouslj carried with these two exceptions. J. am pleased to be able here to give Mr Allen's reply, and there is no breach of confidence in so doing. " I am obliged," he writes, "to you for the two resolutions. ... I regret Magistrate Stratford's decision, and so far jib the facts before me disclose, think that, in the interests of the law-abiding, it is a great p% so light a sentence was passed." Anent the feueral question of reviewing in public the ecisions of magistrates, I a<jree in the main with your correspondent, but just in order that our courts may be " courts of justice," and not courts of injustice, it is sometimes necessary that magistrates should be made to feel that the sense of justice of the law-abiding is outraged by such flagrantly lenient treatment of the persistent law-defying. Even tho Otago Daily Times— a paper which cannot by any stretch of imagination he accused of ultra-pro-hibitionist tendencies — thought fit to review in » most stringently adverse manner the decision in question. Why not the general public? Magistrates live in the same world as we do ,and are amenable to the same power -of just do, and are amenable to the sume power of just and righteous public opinion. — 1 am, etc., J. SWANSON REDD. The Manse, Waitahuna, August 18.